English Chess Forum

How many are there? I was in a bookshop in Huesca on Thursday and I think I counted thirty-two.

Last time I was in a bookshop in England I think there might have been two.

Waterstones is very minimal now. A small, fairly random, handful on offer in the bigger stores. Definitely worse than it was.

If you're on Baker street at the time then things of course improve rather Otherwise just at congresses I think. Unless any other physical stores?

I don't know if my habits are symptomatic of the presumably declining trend, but I prefer to purchase electronic versions when possible. Living in a small apartment, I don't have space for lots of paper books. They also tend to be a bit more affordable.

I do very much like paper books for their aesthetic value though and think it would be an albeit logical shame if chess literature were to become primarily digital in the future.

In my local bookshop in Saint Etienne (pop. 200 000 or so), somewhere between 10 and 15 chessbooks. 90% of these are translations, mostly from English, which can be found cheaper via the Internet, so even when I used to buy books, I'd buy them in English. I've now stopped buying books until I get through the ones I already have, which is to say probably never.

Out of curiosity Justin, of the books you saw, how many are written by native Spanish-language writers?

Peter Constantinou wrote:I do very much like paper books for their aesthetic value though and think it would be an albeit logical shame if chess literature were to become primarily digital in the future.

I think it would be a shame if any literature were to become primarily digital, but then again I still possess a reasonably large vinyl record collection - I never play them, but then again I don't read the chess books either.

As for bookshops, virtually zero now - I used to visit, after school, a small bookshop in Slough, which must have had 30 or 40 titles in stock, and must have shaped my early studying (Reti's Best Games, Botvinnik, etc)

Peter Constantinou wrote:I don't know if my habits are symptomatic of the presumably declining trend, but I prefer to purchase electronic versions when possible. Living in a small apartment, I don't have space for lots of paper books. They also tend to be a bit more affordable.

I know what you mean about space, but I find kindle chess books difficult to read. Hard to flip through to find what you want. Can't make notes on them in pencil. Unfortunately an awful lot of chess books come with an awful lot of typos - can't really correct them on a kindle.

Playable books might be a different story, but I haven't tried any of those.

I don't have a local bookshop btw. Nearest thing is a WH Smiths. Foyles up in the centre of London used to have more chess books than Chess & Bridge but it's a tiny selection now.

Niall Doran wrote:Out of curiosity Justin, of the books you saw, how many are written by native Spanish-language writers?

Most. There were a couple of Lakdawalas in translation though.

Foyles used to be huge for chess, didn't it?

JustinHorton wrote:

Niall Doran wrote:Out of curiosity Justin, of the books you saw, how many are written by native Spanish-language writers?

Most. There were a couple of Lakdawalas in translation though.

Foyles used to be huge for chess, didn't it?

It still has a chess section, last time I looked, complete with BCMs. But the specialist trade is still best.

Doing fine last I saw too, although that was a little bit ago. That's still just two shops in London mind, which used to be three with BCM and Chess & Bridge before they had to merge, drop one store etc. London is also of course rather different to the rest of the UK in many ways.

In the North of England (esp S/W Yorkshire) the congresses/book stalls there are quite frequent in winter and relatively easy to get to by train etc so its generally pretty easy to get any books you're after at one of those.

Part of the reason for my initial query, though, is that there's not, apparently, a selection in ordinary bookshops any more that might attract ther casual browser, the person who doesn't go to tournaments , who may not know that there's such a thing as congresses bookstalls (or even congresses). This didn't use to be the case, and isn't the case where I live.

What local bookshop?

Boarders in Leeds used to have quite a good selection, a whole two racks on the top floor dedicated to chess and card games, they also used to stock Chess magazine.

In the Chess section, there was a table with a fold up chess set and a resident old codger called Harry hanging round most days to play people (he didn’t work for Boarders or anything, just used to sit there!).

I got into Chess seriously during a nine month period of unemployment, and would go there most days to play him, I think he was only in the 100 grade area, but at the time he used to smash me up with things like the Grob and Traxler.

Sadly Boarders shut a couple of years back, and by then the chess section had gone down hill to about one shelf worth, with no more chess set, or Harry. Some happy memories of an otherwise dull period in my life though.

These days we just have a big Waterstones with about 3 chess books in it, and that's if you are lucky!

Yup. It was like that in York ~15 years back too. Waterstones/Borders both with decent chess sections. Waterstones in Manchester had decent stock for the first few years I was there too. Now basically nothing.

An awful lot of it down to the 'net of course, which does compensate to a fair degree.

The pattern described by several contributors here - the disappearance of chess books from British bookshops - is easily explained.

In 1997, one of the last Resale Price Maintenance agreements - on books - was abolished. This freed up competitive pricing in book sales, driving down the price of many books. Small local bookshops quickly gave way to large book chains like Waterstones and Borders because the chains could protect profitability through purchase scale economies (aka 'bulk buying'). But 'bulk buying' requires 'bulk selling'. Hence the chains began to populate their shelves and window displays with quickly-shifted 'best-sellers'. Retaining slow-moving, low volume speciality stock like chess books was simply impractical, economically: alternative providers, like Amazon, could meet that demand far more cheaply.

What remains the case in Spain apparently,will never again apply in Britain; not as things stand

David Robertson wrote:The pattern described by several contributors here - the disappearance of chess books from British bookshops - is easily explained.

In 1997, one of the last Resale Price Maintenance agreements - on books - was abolished. This freed up competitive pricing in book sales, driving down the price of many books. Small local bookshops quickly gave way to large book chains like Waterstones and Borders because the chains could protect profitability through purchase scale economies (aka 'bulk buying'). But 'bulk buying' requires 'bulk selling'. Hence the chains began to populate their shelves and window displays with quickly-shifted 'best-sellers'. Retaining slow-moving, low volume speciality stock like chess books was simply impractical, economically: alternative providers, like Amazon, could meet that demand far more cheaply.

What remains the case in Spain apparently,will never again apply in Britain; not as things stand

David is correct, but I'll add one more thing: supermarkets also moved into the market. They stock only the best-sellers, not even bothering with the still relatively broad range of stock that the chains carry.

Chess, as a highly specialised sub-market, didn't get much shelf space even in the Fischer boom - there were only so many people who could reasonably be expected to buy anything other than an introductory book. Batsford mostly stopped bothering with general bookshops, preferring to sell via direct marketing and specialist dealers. WH Smith wanted to see a print run of 25,000 before they'd even consider stocking a chess book in the 1980s (typical print runs were between 3,000 and 5,000). A GM simul in a bookstore would persuade the shop to take a small supply of books, but at more than £200 + expenses for the GM's services the profitability of such efforts was questionable.